It’s “TOTALLY PREDICTIBLE” That Bernie Would Be Ahead Right Now, Hillary Says

It’s “totally predictable,” Hillary says, that Bernie Sanders would be surging past her in the polls.

“Serious trouble?” Nah, she says.

But her actions tell another story. On the campaign trail, Hillary has been desperately trying to distance herself from Bernie Sanders, who has surged ahead in both Iowa and New Hampshire. She’s attacked the Vermont Senator on taxes, guns and health care.

“I have always known that if you’re gonna run to be president, particularly in the Democratic Party, it’s a long, hard, challenging road, and so I’ve been in these elections before,” Clinton told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota in a segment that aired Tuesday evening. “They always tighten up as people begin to make up their minds, as they look at the candidates. Totally predictable. I feel really, really good about the campaign organization that I have.”

The intensification of the Democratic race for the nomination comes as Sanders leads Clinton in two early-state polls released Tuesday and has closed a 20-point gap from December nationally down to just 7 percentage points.

“I don’t pay any attention to this,” said Clinton, who added that primary polls are “unpredictable” and have only gotten harder to conduct. “I don’t feel that it’s a good reflection about who will actually come out on caucus night. I can only tell you that the energy, the enthusiasm, the excitement of my volunteers, my organizers, the voters who come, who sign up on commit-to-caucus cards is just building. That’s my experience. So I’ll let people poll and try to figure out who’s gonna actually show up. I’m looking at people who are showing up, making up their minds and trying to, you know, convince them to come out and caucus for me.”

Clinton said she doesn’t spend much time thinking about losing Iowa and New Hampshire, where she trails Sanders.

“I’m gonna do everything I can to win as big a margin as possible in the caucus, then go to the primary, but this is a national campaign,” Clinton said. “Remember, I campaigned all the way into June last time, and I have always thought that given the unpredictability and the changes in people’s concerns going into this election, that we wouldn’t know exactly how the outcome would be for a couple of cycles of these primaries and caucuses.”